By Andy Gambell

They are building nests out of bones – femurs, shins, clavicles, jawbones, skulls. There is a clinical feel to the room I am waiting in. The room feels like an outdated doctor’s office, or a place to draw labs. They build nests to nurture the young. It is the most directly obvious connection to the cycle of life, using old dead things from the previous generation to build a home to incubate the next. Spiders and octopus come to mind subconsciously, but I’m not sure of the connections. Death and new life embroil together. I am waiting and I am cold and I know that I will be useful as the incubator needed for the next generation. I have had a nice life, and am, if not ready for it to be over, am at least at peace with the idea that it will be soon.

The flooring in here should be concrete, I think, but is a linoleum that was popular in the eighties and nineties. It’s strange how fads change, even fads about what is fashionable in a house. I tap my foot in boredom and fatigue and anxiety. I am anxious about death. 

The nests used to look truly like bird nests, but now they’ve changed. Now they are closed in, dark, one tunneled opening to get the precious child inside. The bones are structured in a way to keep the roof closed, a ball of bones. Some bones are bleached white, some are old. I do not know why the change. I do not know what grows inside.

The butcher stands in a leather apron in the center of a room. There is a drain in the floor. He smiles. He is a small man with inviting eyes and a warmth about him that puts one at ease. I will take care of you, his smile says. He motions me to the center of the room and begins to measure my limbs with his eyes. It is obvious that he is an expert. 

I will be useful. Whatever the state says should be should be. Nobody should question the state; nobody should question the state; nobody should question the state. A mantra from retraining.

I step into a ring of light in the slick center of the room. I will begin my next journey soon.

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Andy Gambell lives is Floresville, Texas with his wife and daughter. His work has appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Bluestem, and other places. He could be anything.